“Sarah! Stop chasing pigeons. This is my first trip in Italy; I want to buy a souvenir to commemorate this experience,” I whined to Sarah as we strolled through a small marketplace in Florence. I found the perfect present for myself and decided to purchase a glass ring from what I believed to be a very kind Italian woman. It was a beautiful piece of jewelry, and somehow I managed to even bargain a Euro off, maybe because of my beautiful use of broken Italian. “Quan-to costaaa?” She loved me, but what I really loved was my first Italian purchase.

A mere hour later, I was holding my small and useless European cell phone, and thought, ‘That’s strange. My finger hurts. Weird.’ Blood was running at an incredible rate down my hand. The only purchase I had made in Florence, had managed to cut me without me noticing. The ring was broken, shattered and imbedded in my skin. I went back and tried to explain to the formerly nice woman, that the ring she sold me both cut my finger, and in some way had also broken my heart. I didn’t know the Italian words for “naÃive shopper,” but her amicable attitude had disappeared (perhaps with the broken half of my ring), and she did not care. She told me to go away in Italian, and I’m pretty sure she laughed as I walked away, sad and dejected. Where was I going to shop now? No one likes a bleeding tourist.

Devin Sinnott, Chicago

Kansas University sophomore